The idea that there is a staircase of gold and marble, which leads to knowledge is seductive, but seems to me that the idea of something needing to get broken before we can learn anything is a more true idea. It is my experience, maybe you can escape it, but I doubt it. Unless the heart breaks, we will never know anything about love. As long as our objective universe doesn’t collapse, we’ll never know anything about the world.

- Leonard Cohen

what's a RocknRolla?

what's a RocknRolla? And I tell 'em - it's not about drums, drugs, and hospital drips, oh no. There's more there than that, my friend. We all like a bit of the good life - some the money, some the drugs, others the sex game, the﻿ glamour, or the fame. But a RocknRolla, oh, he's different. Why? Because a real RocknRolla wants the fucking lot

The Love Song

Though the love song comes in many guises – songs of exultation and praise, songs of rage and of despair, erotic songs, songs of abandonment and loss – they all address God, for it is the haunted premises of longing that the true love song inhabits. It is a howl in the void, for Love and for comfort and it lives on the lips of the child crying for his mother. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the raving of the lunatic supplicant petitioning his God. It is the cry of one chained to the earth, to the ordinary and to the mundane, craving flight; a flight into inspiration and imagination and divinity.

The love song is the sound of our endeavours to become God-like, to rise up and above the earthbound and the mediocre.

Mystery

Mystery is ancient. It's the essence of everything. It violates all conventions of beauty and understanding. It was there before the beginning, and it will be there beyond the end. We were created in it. The Mississippi Sheiks recorded a song called "Stop and Listen." To most music aficionados, it's but a ragtime blues. But to me, it's words of wisdom. Saint Paul said we see through the glass darkly. There's plenty of mystery in nature and contemporary life. For some people, it's too harsh to deal with. But I don't see it that way.(Bob Dylan)

Do you believe in magic?

That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

Shelley

WE ARE UGLY BUT WE HAVE THE MUSIC

L. Cohen

SONGWRITING

"Songwriting is like fishing in a stream: you put in your line and hope you catch something. And I don't think anyone downstream from Bob Dylan ever caught anything" (Arlo Guthrie)

Penny Lane

I always tell the girls, never take it seriously, if ya never take it seriously, ya never get hurt, ya never get hurt, ya always have fun, and if you ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends.

Followers

Music is my savior, I was maimed by rock and roll, I was tamed by rock and roll, I got my name from rock and roll

(Jeff Tweedy)

“I formed a new group called Alcoholics-Unanimous. If you don’t feel like a drink, you ring another member and he comes over to persuade you.”

Richard Harris

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom(Bob Dylan)

Sonetto 129

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action; and till action, lust is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait. On purpose laid to make the taker mad; Mad in pursuit and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell
(Shakespeare)

Almost Famous

Penny Lane: You're too sweet for rock and roll.
William Miller: Sweet? Where do you get off? Where do you get sweet? I am dark and mysterious, and *pissed off*! And I could be very dangerous to all of you! You should know that about me... I am *the enemy*!

"TV and the internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time in public"
Douglas Coupland

“I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel’s”
(Frank Sinatra)

Lester

"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool"

"There's a lot of fucked-up people out there writing about music. They're not critics. They're just plain stupid"
(Tom Verlaine)